The headline-hitting billionaire Elon Musk seems to have an opinion on everything—now including art. The outspoken founder of SpaceX and best buddy of President elect Donald Trump has taken to his own social media platform, X, to share a series of famous paintings brought to life courtesy of artificial intelligence (AI).
Showing static scenes that morph into a series of weird rolling panoramas with animated figures, the video was originally created by user @dvorahfr. The AI creator is presumably a fan of Trump’s newly appointed efficiency tsar, having recently posted “Each day on X is like a dream !”.
Musk’s post presents souped-up AI versions of Le Désespéré (The Desperate Man, 1843-45) by Gustave Courbet, Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David (1803) and The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich. Gustave Caillebotte’s L’Homme au balcon (1880), which shows an elegant gent surveying Boulevard Haussmann in Paris from on high, is also transformed. But one eagle-eyed observer spotted a very modern addition in this image—a 21st-century vehicle passing on the road beneath.
“AI will be incredible,” Musk writes alongside the series of shifting images. Perhaps not quite as incredible as he hopes.
